Paul Surace

Greetings. My name's Paul Surace, and I've been working as a full-time Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist with Kaiser Permanente's Behavioral Health program for the past 15 years. I tend to be a "straight shooter" --who is both goal-oriented and solution-focused with my patients, but very much collaborative in helping patients to decide what is their priority goal(s), and discovering how my patients would like to accomplish these goals. I enjoy working with teens, adults, couples, and families--helping patients to solve work stress, anger, self-esteem, communication, career, and relationship issues and have had a lot of practice in working with anxiety, depression, and grief diagnoses as well.

My approach

I tend to be a therapist who is both "directive" in that I frequently work with my patients to problem-solve, and thus I am solution-focused and goal-oriented. I will frequently offer up ideas to my patients on what they may wish to "practice" in order to improve their situation. However, I'm also very "collaborative" in that I'm ALWAYS seeking input on what are the problems/issues that my patients are most "invested in" solving or improving, and how they wish to solve the problem. I also use a Cognitive Behavioral approach -- which may have me asking my patients to examine and be more aware of their negative thinking patterns and irrational thoughts, and to work on replacing them with more rational logical thoughts and thinking patterns. More often than not, that can help patients to see their "glass as half full".

My focus

I enjoy working with adults and couples-- helping these patients to solve various types of problematic issues such as Work Stress, Anger Management, Low Self-esteem, poor communication skills, career loss and confusion, work stress, and Partner-Relational issues. At Kaiser Permanente, I ran and/or facilitated the following groups: Anger Management, Couples Communication, and Work Stress groups. So I've had a lot of practice in working with couples and individuals with anxiety, work stress, anger management, and partner relational issues over the years.

My communication style

I'm pretty much a straight-shooter in the way I try to create more "awareness" as to what the patient may be struggling with and what may have been their particular history that helped to promote the problem in their life. HOWEVER, I really appreciate kindness and respect, and empathy when it's shown to me, and that's the same kind of tone I try and take with my patients as we go about the business of doing therapy. I like for the therapy room or video chat to be a SAFE place for patients to come and share their thoughts and feelings with me.

My journey to mental healthcare

After a pretty intense personal career disappointment (around the age of 40) --I sought out therapy for myself as I was feeling depressed, betrayed, and a bit lost at having to "start over" so late in life. And it wasn't easy to let go of this dream that I'd held close to my heart, and be open to trying on a different career for myself at this later stage of my life. Thus said, I sought out a therapist to work with me and had a very good experience with her over six months of doing the hard work of therapy --and seeing what things in myself that I needed to work on. Eventually, I told her during one of our sessions that "I think I can do what you're doing with me." And she agreed with me wholeheartedly and encouraged me to pursue the field of therapy. I was enrolled in a Graduate school -- pursuing a MA degree in Clinical psychology-- within six months of that conversation with my own therapist, and never looked back.

My goals for you

In a COLLABORATIVE way-- I enjoy "interviewing" my patients and actively listening for the kinds of things that they find most challenging in their current life story-- and in order to arrive at a goal-- may ask questions like the following; ''What brings you into therapy? Why now? What are you most struggling with? What is the problem that you most want to solve? These are the kind of questions-- that may help us to set up a goal that the patient is INVESTED in achieving. Without that investment on the part of the patient-- I don't have much to work with going forward. And I understand that It may take several sessions for us to arrive at an appropriate goal for us to work on together.

My first session with you

Mostly a lot of questions -- asked in a respectful way-- with the understanding that the patient can Veto any questions that he/she doesn't feel comfortable responding to in that first meeting and those to follow. This is because I want to keep the patient feeling "emotionally safe" and let them know that they have the power to Veto any question I ask. However, I will enjoy asking questions to get to know that person and discover both their GIFTS and/or STRENGTHS that may eventually help us in problem-solving-- in their problem or challenged Areas. ALSO, this is probably obvious-- but this first session will also have me doing a lot of ACTIVE LISTENING-- so that I can align with and understand my patient to the best of my ability as quickly as I can.